Microsoft clarifies Windows Phone update delay

Yesterday we revealed, courtesy of the Microsoft's official French blog, that the NoDo copy and paste update to Windows Phone 7 was being held back to the latter part of this month.

Now Microsoft has gone and spilled the beans in English, courtesy of a lengthy post on the official Windows Team Blog, on just why it's being delayed, and what that means for future WinPho updates.

For such extensive comment on the subject we have new Windows Phone Customer Experience Engineering general manager Eric Hautala to thank, one of whose first tasks has been to dish out a thousand-word post on all kinds of things surrounding software updates.

But let's skip straight to the important stuff. Yes, the NoDo update is being delayed, and here's why: Microsoft is concerned that the issues that affected last month's pre-update are repeated.

“I believe it’s important that we learn all we can from the February update,” Hautala wrote. “So I’ve decided to take some extra time to ensure the update process meets our standards, your standards, and the standards of our partners. As a result, our plan is to start delivering the copy-and-paste update in the latter half of March.”

And what, then, of Mango, the much bigger update we're expecting later this year? “This short pause should in no way impact the timing of future updates, including the one announced recently at Mobile World Congress featuring multitasking, a Twitter feature, and a new HTML 5-friendly version of Internet Explorer Mobile.”

So there you have it. If Mango is late, it's not because of these problems, it's because of a whole different set of woes. You've been warned.